Authenticity Requires Consistency After Recognizing what feels off, Exploring the facts with curiosity, telling yourself the Truth, Understanding your patterns and needs, and Reclaiming the narrative of your own story – this is what comes next: you move forward differently. You make decisions from alignment instead of fear. That’s what it means to Navigate your life authentically. In the last step of the RETURN Method, we are free to move forward in our lives and live from a place of authenticity. That sounds exciting and rewarding, but what exactly does it mean to Navigate Your Life Authentically? What is it actually like? Most people value authenticity in theory but struggle…

The Story You’ve Been Told vs. the Story You Choose Everyone tells themselves a story about their own lives. We all carry around a story of who we are and how we got that way. A lot of those stories were written when we were little, oftentimes during moments that felt bad and made us feel like we weren’t enough. Being bullied when you’re in middle school may have taught you that you needed to prove yourself, and that you needed to maintain a certain image in order to have value. That’s the story you may have told yourself about an isolated, yet ongoing, event that happened and had nothing…

The Myth That Closure Comes From Resolution I think many of us are taught in some form or another that closure comes when we get justice. We’re taught that after there’s a resolution, an understanding, a conversation, or some type of acknowledgment – that’s when closure happens. That would be the justice version of closure that’s nice and complete. This version has a clear beginning and end point, and it happens when an injustice is later addressed. In real life, however, we don’t always get remedies. People oftentimes don’t acknowledge what they did, and at some point you realize you’re responsible for your own peace. Finding resolution doesn’t always arrive…

The Myth of Closure When someone hurts us, we want an explanation. We want them to tell us why they did it, or how they feel. Sometimes, after an event, we get stuck trying to figure it out. We might spend hours ruminating, replaying conversations, and trying to pinpoint exactly the moment that things ‘went wrong’. It can feel like life is happening to us, rather than for us. What I’ve noticed is that the closure we’re looking for, that answer, that magic moment when everything suddenly becomes okay – it’s something you create for yourself. Closure is something you choose; closure is a boundary. You can want closure about…

Have you ever been in a group setting, and everyone is chatting, and the atmosphere is light – and then enter that one person who just can’t read a room? This person stands out like a sore thumb, energetically. They are up when everyone else is down, down when everyone else is up. Bringing up a conversation that ended, not that long ago – with the same content.  Typically this person makes the air a little awkward, or otherwise uncomfortable for everyone around. It’s almost as if you want to get their attention and say something like “Hey! Look around!” because nothing they’re doing or saying is in alignment with…